Dia Da Costa
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040603
- eISBN:
- 9780252099045
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040603.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This book rethinks the hegemonic and sentimental optimism around the arts and creative economy by politicizing a global discursive regime that effectively asks the poor to eat heritage. Critical ...
More
This book rethinks the hegemonic and sentimental optimism around the arts and creative economy by politicizing a global discursive regime that effectively asks the poor to eat heritage. Critical scholarship largely views creative economy as new, as applicable to the de-industrializing global North, and as neoliberal commodification and governmentality. It neglects complex and intersecting histories of national, colonial, development, and progressive politics; longstanding uses of creative practices to remake economies and polities; and spatial specificities that give a global discourse traction. Attending to historical, spatial, and ethnographic complexities, this book probes discursive planning and activist politics intersectionally. Focusing on India, the analysis juxtaposes nationalist and progressive histories alongside critical ethnographies of two activist performance troupes: Communist-affiliated, Jana Natya Manch, and the indigenous Chhara’s (former ‘criminal tribe’) community-based Budhan Theatre. The subtle invasions of commodification, heritage, and management into performance make activist theater a crucial site for considering what counts as creativity in the cultural politics of creative economy. A transnational feminist approach drives this exploration of precarious lives, livelihoods, and ideologies at the intersection of heritage, planning, and performance. By analyzing the creators, performers, and activists involved—individuals at the margins of creative economy and society—it builds a provocative argument. Their creative practices may survive, challenge, and even reinforce the economies of death, displacement, and divisiveness used by the urban poor to surviveLess
This book rethinks the hegemonic and sentimental optimism around the arts and creative economy by politicizing a global discursive regime that effectively asks the poor to eat heritage. Critical scholarship largely views creative economy as new, as applicable to the de-industrializing global North, and as neoliberal commodification and governmentality. It neglects complex and intersecting histories of national, colonial, development, and progressive politics; longstanding uses of creative practices to remake economies and polities; and spatial specificities that give a global discourse traction. Attending to historical, spatial, and ethnographic complexities, this book probes discursive planning and activist politics intersectionally. Focusing on India, the analysis juxtaposes nationalist and progressive histories alongside critical ethnographies of two activist performance troupes: Communist-affiliated, Jana Natya Manch, and the indigenous Chhara’s (former ‘criminal tribe’) community-based Budhan Theatre. The subtle invasions of commodification, heritage, and management into performance make activist theater a crucial site for considering what counts as creativity in the cultural politics of creative economy. A transnational feminist approach drives this exploration of precarious lives, livelihoods, and ideologies at the intersection of heritage, planning, and performance. By analyzing the creators, performers, and activists involved—individuals at the margins of creative economy and society—it builds a provocative argument. Their creative practices may survive, challenge, and even reinforce the economies of death, displacement, and divisiveness used by the urban poor to survive
Dia Da Costa
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040603
- eISBN:
- 9780252099045
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040603.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter historically locates the creative economy global discursive regime in the Indian context whilst challenging the presumed newness of creative economy policy. Tracing Indian policy debates ...
More
This chapter historically locates the creative economy global discursive regime in the Indian context whilst challenging the presumed newness of creative economy policy. Tracing Indian policy debates over culture and development since the 1950s, it demystifies the seeming contradictions between disjuncture and continuity in policy by considering the sentiments deployed in India’s planning process. India’s political economic transition from development nationalism to neoliberal capitalism is accompanied by a shift from sentimental nationalism and its pity for artisanal victims of planned industrialization in the 1950s toward sentimental capitalism and its optimism about the poor’s artistic entrepreneurialism in the new millennium. Hindu culturalisms and neoliberal commodification combine to sell pride and optimism as means of reinventing Indian heritage—lending a global discourse traction.Less
This chapter historically locates the creative economy global discursive regime in the Indian context whilst challenging the presumed newness of creative economy policy. Tracing Indian policy debates over culture and development since the 1950s, it demystifies the seeming contradictions between disjuncture and continuity in policy by considering the sentiments deployed in India’s planning process. India’s political economic transition from development nationalism to neoliberal capitalism is accompanied by a shift from sentimental nationalism and its pity for artisanal victims of planned industrialization in the 1950s toward sentimental capitalism and its optimism about the poor’s artistic entrepreneurialism in the new millennium. Hindu culturalisms and neoliberal commodification combine to sell pride and optimism as means of reinventing Indian heritage—lending a global discourse traction.
